A couple of hear back, the Bakersfield Californian reported that most farm workers in the fields have never heard of Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers Union. The union’s health and pension plans each reported less than 3,500 contributing workers in a state which has, seasonally, from 350,000 to 700,000 workers in its fields and orchards. Less than 2% of the state’s agricultural workers are protected by a Farm Workers contract at any given time.
Of the union’s claims to have “won basic, humane treatment for the campesinos,” the LA Weekly’s Marc Cooper, writing in 2005, said, “nothing could be further from the truth.”
According to Cooper, wages of California’s farm workers have been at best stagnant and, by most reckonings, are in decline. With almost all workers stuck at the minimum wage of $6.75 an hour, it’s rare to find a farm worker whose annual income breaks $10,000 a year.
It's all brought into focus by this fact: the number of United Farm Workers contracts peaked at perhaps 150 in the mid-1970s; but as of 2006, there were “fewer than 25.” Yearly, the union solicits and receives $20 million to $30 million in donations, but "most of the funds go to burnish the Chavez image and expand the family business, a multimillion-dollar enterprise with an annual payroll of $12 million that includes a dozen Chavez relatives." --- that's according to th Los Angeles Times.
Here's one Link, of many.
At this point, if they don't have access to their Mexican rent-a-slaves, California growers will probably find that mechanizing the remaining farm-labor jobs makes more economic sense than raising wages.
Or maybe California agriculture will go the way of the Michigan auto industry: they can do it cheaper in China.
Adios.
Thanks for that info. I suspected that might have been the case, but I missed that information confirming my suspicions. Of course I didn’t see what the “family” business is, but there is a strong lobby component, that is for sure.
Can those jobs be mechanized?